Professor McLeod mentioned that some companies, such as IBM, are using 2nd life as a collaboration tool. For several reasons, I think this is somewhat ridiculous. A part of the guest lecture included a demonstration of creating objects in SL. Several class members joined professor McLeod in SL to try building things as well. While I did not have an avatar present at the demonstration, it seemed to me that very little collaboration was actually taking place via SL. All of the instructions of how to create an object were provided verbally by professor McLeod as well as real life gestures towards the projected image of SL. I know that SL is capable of supporting voice, but the demonstration we saw lacked voice.
We know that collaboration relies on several factors including grounding and workspace awareness. SL is somewhat lacking in both of these fields. Grounding can be accomplished through text-based chat fairly easily, but I would argue that the visualizations in SL do not contribute much in terms of grounding. Workspace awareness is partially present because an observer can watch an item being created. An observer can see all changes made to the object as they are made, but they cannot actually see what interface the creator is using to make changes.
One possible application this could have in the business world is presenting models. We can imagine a company considering a new product, and they are inspecting a prototype object made in SL. This could be useful because SL is free to use, as opposed to programs like Autocad. The drawback, however, is that objects cannot be designed with great detail, as in professional modeling software. SL would be optimal only for simple previews of objects.
A simple preview, however, might be best left to a simpler program, such as several static images. SL is a somewhat distracting environment, allowing users to fly around and do whatever they want. I suspect that employees attending SL meetings would be engaged in private chats and pay little attention to the meeting itself. Boelstorff discusses the shift between chat for non-personal issues to PM (private message) for personal topics. In a SL business meeting, there is no way to moderate PMs, as there would be in a FTF or video meeting.
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Why do you think using Second Life is ridiculous for large companies? It is actually a very good way for them to cheaply and efficiently bring together hundreds of thousands of workers. The return on investment that Second Life brings companies such as IBM is very big. However, other than that I agree with all of the benefits you said about Second Life. The fact that Second Life is free definitely makes it more appealing to users. Good post!
ReplyDeleteI agree - a point that a lot of people seem to miss is that even given the potential of the Second Life system, Second Life is inherently a game atmosphere, and having avatars have the ability to freely move around and create things without any sort of jurisdiction by the "boss", or whoever is in charge of a meeting, brings down the 'professionalism' of the atmosphere. Unlike in real life, business meetings, I feel, -need- that sense of "authority" right in the room, and even if he is 'virtually' present in the SL atmosphere, the effect is mitigated too much to be effective. The point you mention about private chats is a good one - in SL, you can privately IM without anyone knowing. In real life, if you begin a conversation with someone else at the table, everyone can see.
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